Journalistskeep saying that the fight over the Iran nuclear deal has bitterly divided the
American Jewish community. I think that’s wrong. The fight over the Iran
nuclear deal has shown that the American Jewish “community” does not exist.

Community
is not an easy term to define, but it suggests a group of people who share a
common set of behaviors or beliefs. Shared ancestry doesn’t, by itself, create
community. Millions of Americans hail from the British Isles but there is no
Anglo-American community because Americans from the British Isles don’t share
behaviors or beliefs that distinguish them from Americans as a whole. Shared
religion doesn’t, by itself, create community either. There are millions of
American Catholics. But knowing an American is Catholic, as opposed to
Protestant, tells you almost nothing about how she lives or thinks.

In
2015, knowing that an American is Jewish doesn’t tell you much about how she
lives or thinks either. There are today basically two American Jewish
communities (though of course some American Jews fall in between), each of
which has more in common with a group of American gentiles than with each
other. The Iran deal has pitted these two communities against each other. But
they’ve been separate for a long time.

Community
number one is heavily Orthodox, although it includes some older and more
traditional members of the Conservative movement. It’s smaller numerically:
Orthodox Jews comprise only 10 percent of American Jewry. Add in the
traditionalist Conservatives and you have perhaps 20 percent. (That’s based on
the percentage of American Jews who keep kosher). But on Iran, and anything
else having to do with Israel, community number one punches above its weight
because its members are far more likely to devote themselves to Jewish
organizations and causes.

Understanding
community number one begins with understanding the way it lives: apart.
Orthodox and the most traditional Conservative Jews may work among non-Jews.
But they don’t really live among them. According to a fascinating new paper by
the Pew Research Center, 84 percent of Orthodox Jews say most or all of their
friends are Jewish. Among non-Orthodox Jews, the figure is 26 percent.
Eighty-one percent of Orthodox parents send their children to Jewish-only
schools. Among the non-Orthodox, the figure is 11 percent.

There’s
a reason community number one lives apart. It is deeply religious, and defines
being religious as observing a set of laws that require separation. It’s hard
to have close non-Jewish friends when you can’t eat at their homes. It’s hard
for your kids to make non-Jewish friends when they don’t go to school or camp
with them, and can’t participate in extracurricular activities on Shabbat.

In its
effort to buffer itself against a cultural mainstream it considers threatening
to its religious values, community number one shares little with more secular
American Jews. But it shares a lot with conservative American Christians. And
since the September 11 attacks, these similarities have blossomed into a
political alliance based on a shared commitment to Israel, a shared belief that
Islamists threaten both Israel and America, and a shared belief that American
liberals will not adequately combat that threat.

In the
Republican Party, which now claims the allegiance of most Orthodox Jews,
community number one works with evangelical Christians extremely effectively.
In 2012, Meir Soloveitchik, scion of one of American Orthodoxy’s most famous
dynasties, gave the invocation at the Republican National Committee. Ted Cruz
has made the Orthodox community central to his presidential fundraising. And
the struggle against the Iran deal is largely a product of this conservative
Jewish-Christian alliance. In the South, where Jews are scarce, the most
prominent opponents of the deal have been evangelical Christians like Cruz and
Mike Huckabee. In the northeast, the most prominent opponents have been
Orthodox Jews like Joe Lieberman and Brooklyn state Senator Dov Hikind. It’s no
coincidence that the only three Democratic senators to oppose the Iran deal (as
of this writing) hail from New York, New Jersey and Maryland, states whose
Jewish populations are disproportionately Orthodox. Or that later this month,
Schumer will attend a fundraiser thanking him for his vote in Teaneck, New
Jersey, one of the most prominent Orthodox towns in the country.

If
community number one lives according to a series of boundaries between us and
them, right and wrong, community number two is defined by its lack of clear
boundaries. If Orthodox Jews anchor community number one, community two is
anchored by the more than one-fifth of American Jews who define themselves as
Jewish by culture but not religion. These cultural Jews intermarry at a rate of
almost 80 percent. Only one in seven say that all or most of their friends are
Jewish.

If the
Jews in community number two don’t live tribally, they don’t think tribally
either. According to Pew, they reject the idea that God gave the land of Israel
to the Jews. They don’t think the current Israeli government wants peace. And
they overwhelmingly support a Palestinian state.

In
other words, they don’t equate Israel with morality and its adversaries with
immorality. Whereas community number one is Manichean, community number two is
relativistic. It doesn’t see Israel, or Jews, as having any special claim on
morality or truth.

If the
religious Jews of community number one have much in common with conservative
Christians, the secular Jews of community number two have much in common with
secular gentiles. In fact, surveys show that in their political and moral
views, non-Orthodox Jews share more with atheists than with any American
denomination.

If
community number one is an integral part of the conservative Republican
coalition, community number two is an integral part of the liberal Democratic
one. Secular Jews help define the values of blue state America: tolerance,
diversity, irony, empathy. Just think of blue state America’s patron saint: Jon
Stewart.

Secular
Jewish identity is so interwoven into liberal American identity, in fact, that
liberal American Jews often see them as one and the same. As the sociologist
Chaim Waxman has observed, “Increasing numbers of young American Jews assume
that liberal American values are actually Jewish values.” Especially since the
Iraq War, diplomacy has been a core element of those liberal values. And since
2008, no American politician has articulated them more effectively than U.S.
President Barack Obama. Which helps explain why community number two,
overwhelmingly, supports Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

For all
the current talk of intra-Jewish healing, the rift between America’s two Jewish
communities will likely grow. One big reason is generational. Some American
Jews have a foot in both camps, but they’re disproportionately older. It’s
among the older generation that one more often finds Jews who are secular but
intensely tribal (Ed Koch was a good example), and thus live like the members
of community number two but view Israel like the members of community number one.
It’s also more common to find older religious Jews who are nonetheless
politically liberal (Jack Lew is a good example) because they came of age
before the Orthodox community moved en masse into the GOP.

Among
the young, the divide is sharper. Younger religious Jews are more cloistered
than their parents and grandparents. (When Jack Lew and Joe Lieberman were
growing up, many Orthodox Jews still attended public school). Younger secular
Jews are more assimilated and less tribal than their parents and grandparents.In the
past, I’ve speculated about ways to bridge this divide. But doing so will be
hard because Iran is not the cause of the current American Jewish disunity.
It’s a symptom. Since the 1960s, American Christians have been waging a bitter
culture war. And American Jews are now prominent combatants, on opposing sides.